Auch Gedanken fallen manchmal unreif vom Baum.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Empire, authority, and autonomy
Dusinberre, Elspeth. 2013. Empire, authority, and autonomy in Achaemenid Anatolia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Abstract: The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BCE) was a vast and complex sociopolitical structure that encompassed much of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan and included two dozen distinct peoples who spoke different languages, worshipped different deities,
La terminologie normative
Azarnouche, Samra. 2013. La terminologie normative de l’enseignement zoroastrien. Studia Iranica 42(2). 163–194. The abstract and the article are available here. Since orality holds a prominent role in the religious culture of Zoroastrianism, we are not surprised to find direct allusions to this means of transmission within the textual corpus itself (liturgical and theological texts).
Procopius’ Persian tales
Procopius’ Persian Tales: entertainment, history or morality fable? Geoffrey Greatrex (Ottawa) will consider the opening chapters of the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea’s Persian Wars, in which he introduces his theme, the wars fought between the Romans and Sasanian Persians in the sixth century A.D. He recounts a series of intriguing stories about the Persian
Richard N. Frye
Richard Neslon Frye, the Aga Khan Professor of Iranian Studies Emeritus, who passed away on 27 March 2014, has unfortunately become the subject of a political row in Iran. It is good to remember him for what he was, a scholar with a unique and refreshing style and a sharp eye for methodology: There is
The Sasanian Empire as a garden
The Sasanian empire as a garden: The walls and rivers of the Sasanian Empire This lecture by Touraj Daryaee (UCI) looks at the physical and ideological boundaries which the Sasanians created for the idea of Iranshahr. In this late antique construct, inside the empire, protected by walls and rivers was imagined as a garden where
Go east, young man!
Go east, young man! A personal journey In this informal talk the Chair of the Ancient India and Iran Trust, Nicholas Sims-Williams, will describe his research on the Sogdian language and literature, in particular on the Christian texts from the Turfan oasis in Western China, and will try to answer a question which he is